Fuyu no Hiakari Firelight in Winter
by Fox in the Stars
Summary: As Soujiro continues his lone journey, the solitude and cold of winter prove more dangerous than any opponent in battle, but that danger could bring him closer to the truth he seeks. Special guest appearance by Anji.


Fuyu no Hiakari  
"Firelight in Winter"

Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction  
by Laura Gilkey

_Author's Note:_  
While it's fairly loosely-stitched at present, my Soujiro fanfics do form a continuity. They can be read and enjoyed as stand-alones, but for optimum effect, I recommend reading them in chronological order, as follows:  
Life's Battles  
Ikura desu ka  
Okaerinasai  
Owaranakatta  
Fuyu no Hiakari (you are here)  
Fuyumatsu

*

_Maybe I should turn back_, Soujiro thought, but tossed it aside immediately. If he started second-guessing himself, he'd be in real trouble. The innkeeper had said it wasn't so far to the next town, and he'd been walking along this road all day. Surely he was over halfway there, and with the western horizon already dimming into a rosy glow, he certainly couldn't make it back before nightfall. Turning around would only put him in more danger.

But obviously that man had meant "not so far" in good weather, and this was the heart of winter. Not only on the road, but even among the trees beside it, Soujiro couldn't find anything under the white blanket of snow except a thick sheet of ice. The bright sunlight glared like white fire in the snow, fire that did nothing to warm him, but only burned in the cold wind. Even worse, the snow catching the light also caught the heat from it, and through the day that layer of snow had melted into a watery slush that destroyed any small bit of traction the coat of ice might have afforded.

_I really must be stupid like Yumi-san said. If I freeze out here, it'll be my own fault._ But still, he thought that he might as well have come. His money was almost gone, and he'd been in that town for some time. Much longer would have been pushing his fugitive luck, and besides, the place was getting old. He'd been hearing the call of the road for days.

But maybe that was Yuki-Onna(1) calling him into her killing grasp. Weeks had gone by since walking outside was anything but a nightmare. He thought he must have forgotten what it was like, or else he would never have done it again, but how he could have forgotten such a thing, he didn't know. Maybe it wouldn't torture him so if there were any distraction at all, but there was nothing: no animals were about and moving, the trees were dead black skeletons, and the knobby twigs from which soft, emerald-green leaves had rustled only months before were now locked in capsules of ice. He barely heard a sound except the whistling wind, his own footsteps, and his breath, which sounded loud as crashing waves as the cold rasped his throat raw. Sometimes he thought that if he came out here and kept walking long enough, he would come to a place where nothing existed except himself, white snow, and cold wind.

Certainly, he was trying not to be reckless. He had swathed himself in every bit of clothing he could find for insulation, until by now no one could tell what a slight frame he had, concealed under the mass of fabric. They wouldn't even know his face, because he had wrapped his head entirely, leaving only just enough of a crack to see out of. The cloth caught the heat and moisture from his breath and made breathing in the winter air less painful.

But even that wasn't enough now. It had just been too many hours out here. His legs and feet were chilled through, too numb to feel the ground underneath them. The only sensation they gave him was a sharp, icy ache, both from the cold and from fatigue. He even felt it in his hands and body, bundled up inside his clothes. All day he'd been trying to keep his balance on the wet ice, with his hands inside the layers of cloth to keep them warm. If he touched the ice-water with his hands, he'd have to keep them outside to avoid getting his clothes wet, and then he'd have to worry about his fingers, being so thin that they would freeze quickly. So in the end he relied on the sheer brute force of his knees and ankles to keep him upright, and not even Tenken no Soujiro could keep that up forever.

On the left side of the road, a little path branched off. Not really a crossroads. The main road was obvious. But there might be a house there... Or there might be nothing. The path might dwindle away and leave him in the middle of the woods, cold and lost. The cold was starting to numb his mind, but at least he knew it. Better not to consider it. If he started turning around, he could confuse himself. He didn't particularly want to knock on someone's door anyway.

_The worst thing would be to get lost out here. Then I'd be finished for sure._ The fact that it was getting dark was a bit worrisome, but the road was wide and white with ice. There should be a bright moon tonight, and the sky was clear for it and the stars. He'd still be able to see the way. _But why am I thinking about that? That won't happen. I'm not even shivering; when the moon comes out, I'll either be inside warming up somewhere or be dead._

The thickness dulling his thoughts pressed that latter possibility in on him. His body was so cold that it felt as if the entire world had frozen solid around him—the air even felt solid in his mouth. Somehow he was moving through it, but always feeling that solid-ice world pressing in on him, threatening to push him right out of it into whatever Heaven or Hell or nothing at all might be waiting outside of it. It was true that he had stopped shivering some time ago, certainly not because he'd gotten warmer, but because he was cold beyond shivering. His mind had started to slow down, until he was just able to realize that he shouldn't trust his own dimming judgement. He was up against the cold, an enemy no amount of sword-tricks could defeat, so inexorable that the best of strategy could only make it kill him more slowly, and at that he was rapidly running out of time. He panted for enough of that solid cold air to keep him moving, although every breath of it rasped dryly in his throat, every one seeming to say "I can't go on, I can't go on." It would be so easy to rest now. Deeper into the trees, there must be places where the snow was still there, not melted. It would be so easy to go there, get lost among the trees and powder snow, and fall down in it as if it were downy and warm, to fall asleep there and never wake up again...

"No!" he told himself out loud; his voice came out as just a hoarse croak. "I can't think like that. For Shishio-san... It would've been easier just to die, wouldn't it?" He remembered how, when they fought, Himura was already injured and tired, but he won, and he even came through a battle with Shishio after that. Wouldn't it have been easier for him just to give up and die? _I want to be that kind of person. To be strong, strong enough not to give up... The strong live and the weak die. That means if you live it's because you're strong, and if you die, it's because you're weak, right?_ He'd been strong and lived through so much already... To die here like this...

_I can still make it. I can still make it._ He didn't voice it, but he thought it with every expiration of breath, as if whispering it like a mantra. He thought it with force; he pushed himself forward with those words, even as the icy pain ate away at his legs and dragged with weight like lead as he tried to move them. _I can still make it..._ He clung to that thought with the desperation of a drowning man clinging to a floating timber. If he lost hold of it, he knew he would sink into the cold and die. He couldn't afford to think of anything else...

And so he didn't even realize that his foot was slipping until he had lost his balance completely, and came crashing to the ground on his face.

Somehow he was stunned by it, not in surprise, but in a simple lack of any idea what to do next, and he lay there for a long moment, until the cold water soaked through his kimono and touched his skin. _This is no good... I have to get up..._ He folded himself up, got his knees under him, but if he tried to lift his body off the ground or put his feet down, he only slipped again, and his body hit the wet ice with a slap of water and cloth. It was an enormous struggle to find his sleeves from the inside and push his cold-numbed hands through them, but somehow he managed it, and steadied themself with him, although the ice gripped into his hands with a frigid tightness that would never consent to give them back.

He pushed himself up on his hands and knees, and the wind swept under him, across his wet clothes, which let the cold tear at his skin as if there were nothing between them. He gasped at the shock of it, sucking sharp crystals of air through his teeth as he curled around the pain. He'd thought the frozen air had squeezed him too tightly already to have room for such a violent blow, but his chest and belly and his lap were past even cold—they felt white-hot. They felt like they were burning. How it must have felt... being set on fire...

Again, he tried to get his feet on the ground and stand, but when he put weight on them, they only slid out from under him. _I have to keep going... I'll die if I stop moving..._ The cloth over his knees somehow bit into the ice. He pulled his sleeves down around his hands as much as he could, took a deep breath, and pushed himself up again. Again, the cold wind blazed through the wet cloth, but there was nothing else to do. He began to crawl forward on his hands and knees.

It felt like an inch at a time, like crawling across a bed of fire, with coals that bit into his hands and flames eating away at his body. _I can't do this... I can't do this for very long..._ He looked up, and it was almost surprising to see the trees still standing, the road still winding blue-gray ice just like before, as if nothing had happened. The trees were sleeping, and the road didn't care if he died. But not far ahead, it veered off to the left, out of view. _The town is probably right around the bend_, he told himself. _I can do that. Just a little bit further..._

Little by little, the bend in the road inched closer. His body cried out to him, wanting him to stop and fold himself around it to protect it from the cold fire, but he knew he didn't have enough time left to waste any not moving. _It'll be soon... Just around the bend and then..._ He stared at the ice below him as he went until he was out in the middle of the curve in the road, and only then did he dare look up.

The road continued on for an impossibly long way, maybe twenty or thirty yards, and then winnowed off out of sight.

Soujiro paused for only a moment, then kept moving straight, across the road to a tree on the far side. He leaned his shoulder on the trunk, rested his head against it, and let himself fall. The bark caught the cloth over his head and pulled it back, and the ice on the ground kissed his forehead with fire as he curled up in the ice and snow, with his back to the road and the wind. His arms were too numb and clumsy to pull them back out of his sleeves, but he could cross his arms around his hands and get them out of the cold air. With his hands and the wet front of his clothes out of the wind, nothing seemed so bad. He very nearly felt warm, but he even yet had his mind enough to know that he wasn't warm. He was very very cold, and swiftly getting colder.

_I'm going to die_, he thought. _In a week, the ice will be melted off, and then somebody will come down this road and they'll find me right here on this spot where I froze to death. I guess I didn't turn out to be so strong after all._

That thought had no sting in it, and it struck him oddly to find that out, now that he was too exhausted to remember all the reasons he'd been told why that should upset him. _It's true, isn't it? I don't mind being weak. But I wish... Being strong doesn't matter, but I wish I could live._ A few months from now, the snow would be gone, and the air just cool, with the warm sunlight showing through. The trees would wake up, with little yellow-green leaves... He'd seen it so many times, but he hadn't cared then. Like the Kyoto skyline, it was as if he had read about it in a book, so that his mind knew it happened, but he had never experienced how it felt to be there and see it. _I wish I didn't have to die, so I could've seen it just once._

He curled up a bit tighter, to nestle his face in his arms. They were numb and cold, but it was enough to keep the tears from freezing on his face.

**********

Soujiro drifted somewhere, in a state he didn't think he had ever been in before. His body was gone. He couldn't feel it or know where it was. It was almost like dreaming, but he wasn't quite asleep. Hearing and seeing, imagining, and dreaming had frozen together into one half-consciousness. The visions were blurry, the sounds like hearing underwater.

Crunching, almost-rhythmic, thunderous and unfocused. Getting louder... Footsteps coming closer? "Maybe" was enough to see it.

They always said Yuki-Onna was a beautiful woman. He saw Yumi-san coming from behind him, in a white kimono. It was strange, but he couldn't think of another beautiful woman he knew. And she kissed you and took the life out through your mouth... Yumi wouldn't kiss him like that. Maybe on the forehead or the cheek.

The crunching stopped, very close. He could feel her leaning over him...

Something hit him, a wide violent blow in his body, he didn't know where, and suddenly it was being moved, not of his own power, shaken about like a doll, with pain as if he had frozen solid and was breaking apart, being shaken to pieces.

**********

"Can you hear me?" the man shouted. No response. He pulled the cloth away from the drifter's face with a slight crunch of the ice that had frozen into the fabric, and he held his cheek to his nose and mouth, pulled off a glove with his teeth and felt about for the pulse-point in his throat.

In the cold, even the slight warm tickle of breath on his cheek was unmistakable. "Still alive..." He pulled the glove back on, replaced the cloth wrapped over the drifter's face as best he could, and picked him up and carried him over to the mule and cart, balancing carefully, even on snowshoes. He lay the stranger down among his unsold wares and bundled every spare scrap of cloth there around the cold body, but it was still pretty thin... He shrugged off his overcoat and threw it on as well, tucking it in to keep it secure.

"Just hang in there a little longer," he said. "We'll be home soon." He held onto the cart and the traces to steady himself as he hurried back to the front. He took the reins under the mule's chin in one hand, holding them as he stretched to pick the shovel up from the ground with the other. Already there was a crust of ice on it where it had touched the slushy ground, but the man paid that no mind as he hurriedly started breaking up the ice with it again. "Once we're around this bend it's just a little way before the turn to the house..."

**********

Waves of heat, the close feeling of being wrapped up, thick blankets... Soujiro bobbed up into that feeling and back down into the darkness of sleep several times before surfacing, finally, and realizing it wasn't a dream. Was it real? He remembered falling in the snow, knowing that he was going to die. They said it was fire in Hell. Or maybe he'd wake up in the summer, and be someone completely different... His consciousness rocked like a boat at the wondering, and to steady it he focused on what it was that he could feel. Uncomfortable heat beat on his right cheek, but it was welcome after the ice-cold outside. He slowly opened his eyes and looked up at rough wooden rafters flickering with firelight.

"So, you're awake!" A woman came up beside him, with heavy footsteps over the wooden floor. "How do you feel, stranger?"

"... Am I dead?"

"No, you're alive, no thanks to yourself," she said. "My husband found you beside the road out there by the first bend. When he brought you in here, I didn't know if you were going to make it. You were frozen solid. What were you doing out there anyway?"

"I was trying to get to the next town... I walked all day but I couldn't get there."

"In this weather? You're crazy! I'm surprised you made it as far as you did. One more turn and you'd have seen the town."

That sentence thudded into his mind and stirred up something he couldn't identify, so he just lay still and waited for it to pass.

"Would you like some soup?"

"Yes, please," he said, pushing himself up to a seat. The pressure stung in his hands, and when he looked at them they were puffy and red. Thinking about it, he could feel the same kind of pain over his forehead, nose, and cheeks, almost like a sunburn.

"You stay right there!" the woman ordered before disappearing into the kitchen. "You've gotten some frostbite on your feet and you need to stay off them until it heals."

"Okay."

"Whatever possessed you to go out into that?"

"I don't know."

She emerged from the kitchen, with a cloth under the bowl in her hands. "Are you in some kind of trouble with the law?"

"Um, a little." 

She stopped and considered it for a moment before carefully transferring the bowl of soup into his reddened hands. "Let's not exchange names then. That way if the police ask, you can't tell them who harbored you, and we don't know who you are."

"That's probably better," he said, and took a sip of the soup. The warmth of it inside was so satisfying that he hardly bothered to taste it.

"Tomorrow my husband can take you to the inn in town to rest up."

"I don't think I have enough money for that..."

"What do you have?" she asked.

He set the bowl aside and carefully found his wallet in his clothes. Just a few small coins.

"Give it to me," the woman said, and poked around the scraps of money after he handed them over. "Well," she said at last, "where else but here could you get room, board, and bandages for this?"

"That's true," he said. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." She went back to the kitchen and left him to finish the soup.

He ate slowly for several minutes. "Um, Ma'am?" he called after her.

"What is it?"

"Your husband... He saved me?"

"That's right, and none too soon," she called from the kitchen.

He paused for a moment. "Why?"

She came out again to stare at him quizzically. "What do you mean 'why'?"

"Just that. Why did he save me?" Soujiro asked.

"Well, he couldn't very well just leave you out there to freeze to death, could he?"

"I don't know why he couldn't do that," he said.

"Pshaw!" she scolded. "That's just not what people do. You've been through a lot, just eat your soup quietly and get some sleep, okay?"

"Okay." As she said, he finished the soup, set the bowl aside on the floor, and lay back down. So he'd been saved. It seemed unbelievable. And yet, when he thought of it, it wasn't the first time such a thing had happened. The people who had taken Koinu-san(2), and then the old doctor's wife(3)... When people had seen him in trouble, they had helped him. Three times! They couldn't all be strokes of luck, and what this woman was saying... "That's just not what people do." Could that be normal? Could so much of the world be so unlike his family? So unlike Shishio's way? And if so, how could he never have known?

_The people who helped me... I know they were like this all along. But I never met anyone like that before..._ Hardly ever had he met someone who would have saved his life if they had found him like that, dying of cold beside the road. It would literally have been against Shishio's principles to save anyone with his own hands. Himura surely would have saved him, but then he'd never known anyone like him, either, so much that his crystal mind had broken itself apart trying to accept the very existence of Himura and his way. His family, of course they'd have happily seized the chance to let him die. And the other Juppon Gatana... Kamatari might have shed a few tears for him, but surely wouldn't pass up a chance for the position of "Shishio's Right Hand" to open up for her. Usui might well have finished him off himself to have a taste of his blood and the dubious privilege of lording it over Shishio, who would certainly not be flustered at the news that Usui had "broken his little toy"...

Soujiro carefully rolled onto his side, trembling slightly at the thought. The heat and the ordeal made him sleepy, so that his thoughts were becoming tangled and emotional. People he'd known were crowded in his mind, waiting to be judged by this measure. He had so little energy to continue the task, but they were all so insistent... His mind drifted toward those who were the strongest, those whom he'd seen last...

_Anji-oshou_, he realized. _I know he would have saved me._ To have found someone at last was enough to put his mind at ease, and he let himself sink into his pillow and drift away into a heavy sleep.

**********

That night, when Soujiro woke up and saw the man who'd saved him, he asked again "Why?" and got the same answer: "That's just what people do."

It was a week before the frostbite had healed enough for Soujiro to leave his rescuer's home—which he did as quickly as he could, because although it didn't erase the tremendous kindness of saving his life, he knew that he was a less-than-welcome houseguest. It was even more weeks after that before he felt light on his feet again, but even in all that time, he couldn't forget the question, and it was even more puzzling because he thought that if the situation were reversed, he would have done the same thing, and he didn't know why himself. At the same time, it was such a tremendous change! How could this be something so fundamental, and yet spring upon him now, so new?

In those weeks, he couldn't answer the questions on his own or put them aside, but at least he could think of somewhere to turn for the answers. He'd heard what had happened to the other Juppon Gatana; Houji dead in jail in Kyoto, Chou a private investigator at the Kyoto police's beck and call, Saizuchi and Henya in government jobs, Kamatari in America somehow—and Anji, the one who would have saved him, sentenced to 25 years in prison.

It had been half a year since Soujiro had done anything like this, so he planned it carefully. Silence and timing were both essential, so he bought a watch, like the one Yumi used to have, but with no chain. He wrapped it up in cotton bandages to muffle the ticking, except for just enough of a window in the fact to read it, and when finally he felt that he'd gotten his mind and body to the point of readiness, he took it with him to the prison on Hokkaido.

The reconnaissance was a taste of how it would be. The technique came back to him with surprising ease, letting him learn what he needed about the prison's security measures swiftly and discreetly. Many times he'd done this before—usually to kill some captured underling to ensure their silence—but it had been a long time, and now his mind was so different... For the first time, he really felt the fear and danger of being discovered. More than once, he thought to himself that it was a recklessly foolish undertaking—like trying to walk to the next town on a solid sheet of slush-covered ice—but like setting out walking that day, somehow he found himself moving forward with it anyway. And when the night came for the mission itself and he was within the walls of the prison dodging striped patches of full moon light, it would be even more stupid, wouldn't it, to come this far and then turn back?

In the cautious reconnaissance, he'd only been able to discover generally where Anji's cell was, and now was paying that debt. It took some time and a great deal of anxiety to find it—thankfully it was a cell with bars open to the passageway, not one of those iron doors with just a tiny window, so he could glance in walking by silently and recognize Anji's massive frame as he lay sleeping. Soujiro didn't stop just yet, but found a hidden vantage point from where he could observe the guard's rounds first—the hard part was finding enough moonlight for the watch as he kept lookout and timed it, noted when the guard went by, marked the position of the minute hand with his thumbnail at the edge of the window of bandages, then waited. He sat very still and quiet, until his muscles ached, and the bandages around the watch were damp with sweat from his hand, because he didn't dare move it and lose his place. Maybe before, he could have waited like this without complaint, but this time, between physical discomfort and nervous anticipation, he felt ready to fly out of his mind. Somehow he controlled it and sat, waiting.

At last the guard passed by again. It had been fifteen minutes, although it felt like fifteen hours. Best to stay well out of sight, call it ten minutes between passes. Once the guard had gone beyond danger of detection, Soujiro marked the place on the watch again—should've brought a pin to do that with—unfolded himself from his hiding place, and walked lightly back to Anji's cell. By now the moon was high enough that the pool of light from the window fell inside the cell—one less risk of looking really obvious with it shining on him directly. Anji still lay asleep in the shadows, but a memorial tablet stood in the middle of the floor, where it cut a black keyhole into the white wash of moonlight.

"Nee(4), Anji-oshou," Soujiro called softly. He didn't dare tap on the bars, because he couldn't control how far that would resonate. "Nee, wake up, please?"

Anji stirred and sat up. It was difficult to imagine colors in the silver darkness, but it seemed to Soujiro that the kohl around his eyes had faded somewhat—still there was enough left to make his eyes stand out strongly against it as he looked up. "Soujiro? What are you doing here?" He asked it without so much as blinking.

"I know, I know," he blurted. "It was really crazy of me to come here, huh? I mean, it's so scary..." He broke into a fit of nervous laughter, and it was all he could do to keep it under his breath.

"Scary? Soujiro—" Anji started. "Calm down. Take a deep breath."

With several deep, shivering breaths he managed to calm himself. "Sorry. It's so much different to do this now. Like I never realized it was so dangerous..."

"I can understand that, I think," Anji said. "But if you came, it must be important."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"You're not here to break me out, are you?" he asked, in a tone that said he already knew.

"No... I'm sorry, I didn't think about that!" Soujiro apologized, and took a quick glance around the passageway. "I can try if you want me to."

"No, no, please don't," Anji said.

Soujiro sighed in relief. "Actually, um, I really just wanted to talk to you. I know that sounds really dumb of me..." His face felt hot with blushing.

"As I said, I'm sure it must be important for you to have come all this way. What is it?"

"Well, something strange happened to me, and I thought of you..."

"Yes?"

"You know how I used to be. I believed in Shishio-san's rule, that the strong live to prey on the weak. I never saw anything that made me doubt it, until Himura-san... But since then, I've been wandering around, and I've seen a lot of things that seem so different, but I know they were always there, and I just couldn't see them, and now I don't understand..."

"Such as?" Anji asked.

"Well, before I came here, I did something really dumb... I thought I could make it somewhere, but the road was all icy, and it was so cold... I finally fell and couldn't get up anymore. I was sure I was going to die, but someone saved me. I don't even know his name. It was so amazing... But when I asked why, they just said 'that's what people do.' But I never knew anybody like that... Except I thought you would have saved me."

Anji smiled. "I think I would have, and I'm glad you thought of me. So then, the question is why people would do such things?"

Soujiro nodded. "I mean, are most people like that?"

"I think most of them are, but there are enough who aren't to make the world cruel at times," he said. "As for why, I can't exactly say. Most people have a sense of empathy or compassion. It hurts them to see other people suffer, even strangers. They generally want good to come to other people."

"I can understand that some..." After all, Soujiro thought, he had wanted Koinu-san to have a good home(2), and had wanted Okawara-san to be happy with his life rather than give up and kill himself(5). Even when he was a child, when he first met Shishio... _'It must really hurt to be cut with a sword,' and so I didn't want to do that... But then..._ "But then, why do some people have that and some not, do you think?"

"I think everyone has it, if they open themselves to it," Anji said. "Buddha taught that this world and even ourselves are only an illusion, that to the enlightened person, there is no real difference that makes us separate from the earth, the trees, other people... If you are open to the truth that other people _are you_, then it would be only natural to feel their pain."

Soujiro just stared blankly.

"That was a bit much, wasn't it?"

He nodded.

Anji rubbed his chin. "To say it more simply, every person has that sense of empathy and compassion inside them—it's the voice of God, trying to lead people in the right way. But if someone chooses not to listen to that voice, and chooses to be cruel, God won't stop them from what they do, even if they might want Him to."

"So God just makes sure people know what to do, then they have to decide whether to do it?" Soujiro asked.

"That's what I think, from my experience."

Soujiro paused, considering it. "Do you think Usui-san had a voice like that?"

"I take that on pure faith," Anji replied.

Soujiro glanced at the watch, tilting it this way and that to get it in the light. "I should probably go before the guard comes back. I'll be back soon," he said, and darted quietly back into the dark, to his hiding place, and watched for the guard again.

A voice inside, to tell right from wrong? It made sense, Soujiro thought as he waited. Since he'd left Shishio, scarcely ever had he thought about what other people or the law said about what was right or wrong. He'd just been listening to himself, for the first time in ever-so-long, and that was enough. _Even back then, when I met Shishio-san, I wanted to do the 'good' thing, but then..._ But then, if Anji was right, then he, too, had decided not to listen to that voice. His eyebrows pinched low over his eyes. _I didn't mean to do anything bad, but I had to save myself... After that... I don't remember deciding not to hear that voice anymore..._ He knew that he was responsible for the things he'd done, that he wasn't innocent, but...

The guard's footsteps roused him from his thoughts, and he watched and waited until the way was clear before he went back to the cell, where Anji sat waiting.

"You look unhappy," Anji said.

Soujiro nodded. A frown was still a strange sensation. "I can understand what you're saying, about that voice," he said. "I think I have a voice like that... But I never really decided not to listen to it. I mean, I know that doesn't erase what I did, but it feels bad, to be blamed like I meant to do it."

"Almost no one means to," Anji said. "It can be blocked in a moment of pain, too intense to see anything past it. After that, one has to find it again. A sad thing when that takes ten years to do..."

Anji said it looking at the floor, and Soujiro knew that he was really talking about himself. He had heard the story, how Anji's temple had been burned with those he loved still inside, and the path of anger and vengeance it had set him on. Out of tact, he didn't want to draw the contrast directly... "But... The first time I killed anyone, I had to, to save myself. They were going to kill me. And after that, I really didn't decide to stop listening to everything, but it hurt so much, it just happened. What was I supposed to decide?"

Anji hesitated a moment. "You could have decided to die."

Soujiro started. "No! That— That's cruel!"

"I agree; it is. There is a story of the Buddha becoming a rabbit and sacrificing his life to a hungry tiger, but it certainly is cruel to expect that of anyone, more still to force such a decision on them."

"So there was just no way for me to win," Soujiro lamented. "Everywhere I go, I see happy people, with their children... They never needed Shishio-san's philosophy to save their lives... Why did this happen to me?" He sniffled and had to look away.

Anji was silent for a long moment. "Would it be too cruel for me to say there is no reason?"

Soujiro looked up, wiping his eyes. "I thought Buddhists said it was karma or something."

"I don't believe in karma," Anji said. "Not about what happens in our lifetimes, at least." He looked at the memorial tablet. "I know that the most innocent of souls are vulnerable to becoming victims of cruelty or misfortune. To call it repayment of some karmic debt is too convenient, too disrespectful. As I said, people decide what they do, and those decisions create the world. Usually when we say 'the world,' what we really mean is 'other people,' and when we meet those people, their choices determine what we see. When people choose to act heartlessly, everyone who encounters them pays the price. Whoever meant to kill you was free to do what they did, and so was Shishio. You were the unfortunate person caught by chance in the world they created between them. I don't believe there's any more reason for it than that."

"I guess so," Soujiro said sadly. "And then I made a bad world for a lot of people, too... But the world isn't just other people. There's the trees, and snow and ice now..."

"Say society, then," Anji suggested.

"Nee, Anji-oshou," Soujiro said, suddenly taken with a question. "Are you happy here?"

"Hm?" Anji considered it for a long moment. "I wouldn't say 'happy' as such, but I am... satisfied. For ten years I couldn't look at myself. I could only see all the cruelty in the human world outside, and I devoted myself totally to reshaping it into something I could live with. I was so focused on it that I forgot the true need to live with myself. Now, spending my days here alone, I can't help it. At times it's very uncomfortable, but I know that it's what I should be doing, so I'm satisfied."

"I don't think I could do that," Soujiro said. "Wandering around outside, I always notice the sky and the trees... I don't know what I'd do if I was stuck in a place like this and I didn't get to see it, when it comes Spring and the leaves come out... I guess that's why I'm so scared of getting caught," he said with a laugh.

"If that's how you find your answers, then that's what you should do," Anji said. "No two people's paths are just alike. I can imagine that you shut yourself away from the world, and that now it's good for you to reconnect with it, where I lost touch with myself in my misguided quest to save the world."

"Saving the world?" Soujiro said. "That doesn't sound like such a bad thing..."

"The way that I did it was misguided," Anji explained. "I thought that I could enforce virtue, where God Himself does not. Such an arrogant notion, in hindsight... When I speak of people creating the world one at a time, I've given it a lot of thought now, and I realized that that's the only way this world can truly be changed or saved, people changing their minds one by one. If someone wants to save the world, then he should make the corner of it that is his life in the image of his dream, and let it spread by virtue and not by force."

"Wow, you have an explanation for everything!" Soujiro said.

Anji smiled. "Isn't it the job of religious people to explain things?"

"It is, isn't it?"

"How is the time?"

"Oh! I forgot!" Soujiro looked that the watch again and found that he was cutting it close. "I'll be back," he said, and ran off.

As he ducked into his hiding-place again, he shivered not from the cold, and his heart pounded, but he smiled brightly. The power to create the world? It made sense, what Anji said, but it sounded so exciting, almost magical. To save the world by building one's own life around a dream... _That's like Himura-san. He didn't control me, or tell me what to think, but just seeing him living his way got through to me, like no talking or plain fighting could have done. Such an incredible power... Could I be like that?_

That moment before he fell unconscious in the cold had already taught him that what he had thought of as strength wasn't really important to him, but there was something he admired about Shishio, and Himura, because they were strong people. Maybe strength wasn't what he'd thought it was. _Real strength... Could it be something like that? Was that even what Shishio-san had?_ It wasn't Shishio's killing techniques or his raising of an army that Soujiro looked up to when he thought about it. It was the way that Shishio lived out what he believed in without hesitation. _That's why Himura-san and Shishio-san were stronger than me. But now, I can be like that, too..._

To think all this time he'd been trying to find someone or some experience to tell him what the truth was, when he could have decided for himself all along...

Sitting there smiling, Soujiro was so lost in those pleasant thoughts that when he remembered to check the watch again, ten minutes had gone by. The guard must have passed without him noticing, but even a bit of self-recrimination for such sloppiness couldn't bring down his mood. For safety's sake, he waited for the guard to pass again going back to Anji's cell. "Is this the second time the guard came by?" he whispered.

Anji nodded. "When you didn't come back, I was almost worried about you."

"Sorry! I got distracted," Soujiro admitted.

"Hm?"

"Just thinking about what you said. I think you answered my question," he said, and grinned. "You answered questions I didn't even know I had!"

Anji smiled again—Soujiro had never seen him smile so much before. "But you know," Anji said, "you don't have to believe what I say."

"I know," Soujiro answered, "but it's so great, and it makes sense... I want to at least try it out."

"In that case, I'm happy to help."

Soujiro smiled. "I should go now, but Anji-oshou, it was great to see you again."

"It was my pleasure. You've done a great deal of growing up since I saw you last."

"Have I? Well, I'll take what you said, and I'll try to create a good world." He stepped back from the bars and bowed from the waist. "Best of luck to you."

"And to you as well."

"Thank you," Soujiro said, "and goodbye!"

"Goodbye and good luck," Anji said as he started off down the hall.

It took some effort for Soujiro to calm himself from that elation and focus on the task at hand. After all, breaking out of a prison was harder than breaking in, but now the fear was all but crowded out of his mind.

Shuku-chi was very useful at times like this. Too fast for the eyes of an opponent was also too fast for those of a watchman or guard.

**********

Once outside in the winter night air, Soujiro had to bundle himself up again. His body ached with weariness, but he was too excited to sleep, and the sharp cold air only made him feel more awake. The full moon shone strong light so there was little danger of losing the path, and it would be best to get as far away from the prison as possible before resting. He didn't think he'd been seen, but one could never be too careful.

The weeks since he'd nearly frozen to death had seen better weather, and rather than that day's slick ice, the road was hard but almost-powdery with cold. Soujiro walked along it, between vast fields of snow that shone blue in the moonlight, punctuated by silver ghosts of trees that reached feathery bare branches toward the clear, black, starry sky. He walked on legs that ached and shivered with nervous, excited energy rather than cold, all the way through the setting of the moon to the rising of the sun, which washed only hints of color over the still-wintry landscape. The snow and sky were white expanses just touched with blue, with the trees and the road etched against them, grey just touched with brown.

He remembered his last thoughts, when he'd been sure he was going to die. Now he'd live to see sunrises that washed the land in the tender greens of Spring, and he smiled to think of it, seizing a hint from the slight warmth of the sunlight.

So he hadn't survived by his own strength. Last winter he knew he would not have accepted such a thing, wouldn't have known how to live with such defeat. Twice since then, his life had been completely in someone else's hands, but losing to Himura had been the better resolution for him in all truth, and losing to a force of nature, surely there was no shame in that.

_Such bad things happen even to the best people_; he remembered Anji saying something like that. Shishio would have said that even so, only those who could survive by their own strength deserved to. _And I don't know if I deserve to live, but I'm glad I did. If I can create the world, if I can decide what the truth in my life is and not just find it out... Then I want this truth, where someone like me can lose a swordfight or fall down in the snow and still live..._

He pushed back the cloth wrapped around his face for now, for an open view of the sunrise and the feeling of the brisk air on his face. _Thank you, Himura-san, Anji-oshou. Thank you, whoever you are who saved me, and everybody._ He closed his eyes to savor the moment. _Please accept me as one of you. Together, in such gentle ways, let's create a world like this, where even someone like me can be saved._

Even amid the cold winter air, he could feel the firelike warmth of the sun on his face, as he opened his eyes again to see it dazzling in the white snow.

_Owari_

Footnotes:

(1) Yuki-Onna: literally "Snow-Woman." A snow-spirit in Japanese mythology, appearing as a white-clad woman and known for draining the life out of anyone unfortunate enough to encounter her. 

(2) See Koinu-san in "Ikura desu ka?". 

(3) See Kameko in "Okaerinasai". 

(4) "Nee": pronounced as a long "Neh," this is an expression in Japanese for getting someone's attention, a bit like "Hey" in English. 

(5) See Akio in "Owaranakatta". 


End file.
